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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28175364">When We Were Young</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswordswords7/pseuds/wordswordswords7'>wordswordswords7</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Schitt's Creek</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon Gay Character, I like to think Schitt's Creek is a gay haven, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mentioned David Rose, Mentioned Patrick Brewer, Origin Story, Ronnie Lee is a good person, Ronnie arrives in Schitt's Creek, Stevie had a rough childhood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:09:02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,229</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28175364</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordswordswords7/pseuds/wordswordswords7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronnie remembers when it was Maureen sitting behind the motel office desk. Back when Stevie had been little Stephanie Budd—her personality just as prickly and her remarks just as biting...if you could pull them out of her.</p><p>AKA a look back on Ronnie’s arrival to Schitt’s Creek.</p><p>AKAx2 the 1996 Ronnie and Stevie retrospective I didn’t know I needed to write until I couldn’t get it out of my head.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>When We Were Young</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Well I’ve had enough of <em>everything</em> for one day.”</p><p>Stevie is looking up at the emergency repair job Ronnie has done on the motel roof. Ronnie will start repairs in earnest tomorrow when she can get the right shingles at the Rona in Elm Valley. For now though, plywood and poly will have to be enough to cover the mess she’d found up there.</p><p>“You should know better than to let Roland play handyman, Budd.”</p><p>Stevie shoots her an incredulous look, and Ronnie almost laughs at how similar it is to the one she sees regularly crossing David’s face.</p><p>“Do I look like I was here babysitting that ass hat?”</p><p>She’s only been in town for the last four hours, and is still dressed for New York in a pantsuit that Ronnie thinks she probably didn’t pick out for herself. Stevie holds herself differently in it, taller maybe, with an authority that even a long day of travel hasn’t diminished. It’s a good look on her and a stark difference from her usual flannel and denim. David’s influence yet again. Ronnie generally sees her in her usual casual clothing, keeping one foot solidly in the comfort of her old life when she’s not travelling between Schitt’s Creek, New York, and the ever-growing list of Rosebud Motel locations.</p><p>Ronnie just shrugs and the ice melts from Stevie’s demeanor by a fraction as she scrubs her face tiredly with both hands.</p><p>“I need a drink. You in?”<br/><br/>She’s already heading back into the office so Ronnie follows. She can do one drink before Vanessa is due to meet her after a day at the floral shop.</p><p>As Stevie disappears into the back room where she evidently keeps her stash, Ronnie is suddenly struck by a serious case of deja vu. How long ago has it been since it was Maureen emerging from that same room asking if she preferred vodka or rye?</p><p>“Ronnie?”</p><p>Stevie is looking at her expectantly and Ronnie gives her head a shake.</p><p>“Sorry, what?”</p><p>“I said, do you want wine or whiskey?”</p><p>She’s got a bottle of Rose Apothecary red in one hand and Jack Daniels in the other.</p><p>“I won’t say no to two fingers of Jack.”<br/><br/>Stevie snorts and it’s Ronnie’s turn to shoot her an unimpressed glare, even if yes that did sound wrong coming from a gay woman—or anyone for that matter.</p><p>As Stevie pours them each a glass, Ronnie can’t help but remember the days when she had been little Stephanie Budd, sitting on this very same sofa while Maureen checked guests in from behind the desk. She’d been prickly back then too, and just as biting with her remarks—<em>if</em> you could pull them out of her.</p><p>When Ronnie thinks of Stevie these days, the first image that comes to mind isn’t the grown woman who wears straight-faced indifference like a mask. It’s not even the most recent version of Stevie who dons pantsuits and lights up at the opportunity to tease David or The Thumb. It’s of nine-year-old Stephanie Budd, sitting on that sofa and glowering down at her homework, reading a book, or rebuilding the 500-piece puzzle she’d done so many times that she’d restarted putting it together face-down out of boredom.</p><p>Back then, when asked by Ronnie why she was doing it like that, her answer had been far too dry and much too fucking poignant for someone so young.<br/><br/>“Just wanted a change of scenery.” <br/><br/></p><hr/><p>
  <strong><br/>Schitt’s Creek, 1996</strong>
</p><p>The July air was hot and suffocating even after Veronica had stepped out of the beat up Corolla, slinging her dufflebag over her shoulder. She gave the driver—a sweet old farmer type who’d shared his cigarettes with her—an appreciative nod before shutting the car door and looking up at the motel in front of her.</p><p>It didn’t look like much, but it was better than nothing. Better than where she’d been, at any rate.</p><p>Veronica had hopped on a Greyhound bus and had ridden it as far as she could afford to go without spending all that was left of her tip money. Then she’d hitchhiked a few miles more just for good measure. She had needed to get out of Toronto. To take herself out of the equation where half the people she knew were part of the endless dead or dying, living in the coffin of the Village’s queer scene. She’d left it abruptly, on the heels of yet another friend caught in the invisible clutches of a virus they were only just beginning to understand. It felt crushing to leave the place that had started out as a kind of mecca eight years ago. A piece of heaven where someone like her could escape and find acceptance and love that felt right.</p><p>It hadn’t stayed a mecca long though—HIV and AIDs had made it hell in the end. So she’d left and now here she was in some shit town hoping to hide from the misery.</p><p>With a sigh, she trudged into the motel office, drawn like a moth to the blinking vacancy sign. A hard looking woman in her late fifties was sitting behind the desk, reading a flea-bitten paperback novel with a burning cigarette forgotten between two fingers. She looked annoyed at being interrupted when she glanced up to see Veronica walk through the door.</p><p>“How many nights?” she asked by way of a greeting.</p><p>“I’m not sure,” Veronica hesitated, and the woman gave her a steely look. “I might be looking for work around here. To stay a while.”</p><p>“Hmm. Where are you coming from kid?”</p><p>Veronica was almost twenty-five but she ignored the comment. “Toronto...Is that a problem?”<br/><br/>The thing was, if you <em>knew</em>, you <em>knew. </em>And the longer she stood there, the more Veronica got the sense that this woman, with her denim men’s shirt and her filed down nails, understood exactly what she meant. The woman (her name tag said Maureen) was looking at her with interest now. Her dark eyes skirting up and down to take in the details of Veronica’s own lesbianism—worn like a hard won badge of honor for those who could read the signs.</p><p>“Name?” Maureen asked, opting not to answer Veronica’s hedging question.</p><p>Veronica hesitated. This town, no matter if it was just one stop of many or the place she hid away forever, was an opportunity to reshape herself again. To start off fresh and new. Maybe it was naive of her to want it, but when she spoke next, Veronica thought only of the extra inch of distance a reformed identity could give her from her old home and the pain she’d left there.</p><p>“Ronnie. Ronnie Lee.”<br/><br/>Veronica, no Ronnie, leaned against the desk and looked around as she waited for Maureen to fill out the guestbook. Sitting on the sofa behind her was a young, dark-haired girl she hadn’t noticed when she first walked in. The kid was doodling absentmindedly in a school workbook, ignoring the two adults completely. Ronnie glanced at the clock on the wall that read 10:30 PM, and wondered what a little kid like her was doing hanging out here instead of being asleep in bed. As if reading Ronnie’s thoughts, the girl looked up and gave her an angry scowl. Ronnie just raised a brow and turned back to the desk. Across from her, Maureen was holding out a room key but looking at the kid.<br/><br/>“If I look at that workbook and don’t see spelling homework, Stephanie Budd, I’ll whoop you three days to Sunday.”<br/>  <br/>It sounded like an empty threat, and sure enough the girl glared back unflinchingly. To Ronnie’s tired amusement she said, “Whoop, w-h-o-o-p. Whoop.”</p><p>“Very funny. Make sure you have your school things ready to go. If your mother isn’t here in ten minutes, that niece of mine is gonna get a whooping of her own.”<br/><br/>The girl didn’t answer, just went back to her drawing, and Ronnie took her cue to leave the office for Room Four.<br/><br/></p><hr/><p> </p><p>Nine days later, there was a harried knock at the door. For a second Ronnie forgot that she wasn’t in her shitty Toronto apartment, and that it couldn’t be the landlord fixing to collect the overdue rent. Still, she sat up in bed, heart racing and mind scrambling to find her place in her own narrative. To remember where she’d spent the last week and a half, not in Toronto but in a podunk town far north of that death trap city.</p><p>The person at the door knocked sharply again and Ronnie hesitated for just a moment before hearing the raspy, cigarette thick voice calling out her name.</p><p>Maureen, of course.</p><p>Since arriving in Schitt’s Creek, Ronnie had struck up a surprisingly easy friendship with the older woman. Maureen had helped her find a job tending bar on the edge of town, and most afternoons they’d share a drink in the motel office together, shooting the shit. But they’d never talked before noon before, and it was only 10AM now. Groaning, Ronnie got up and pulled on pants and a shirt before opening the door.</p><p>Maureen was standing at the threshold impatiently, one hand locked onto her great-niece’s thin shoulder. The girl was glaring at her feet. So far she’d been a somewhat regular fixture in the motel office, during the afternoons when the school day was over. But for the most part, she rarely deigned to acknowledge Ronnie or any other guest who might wander past her perpetual after-school post on the sofa.</p><p>“I’ve gotta go to Elm Valley. Her mother got picked up on drug violations <em>again</em>, and Frank’s nowhere to be found. Probably shit-faced in a ditch somewhere. I’ll be back to get her before your shift starts, I promise.”<br/><br/>Ronnie shifted uncomfortably for the kid’s sake, but Stephanie seemed used to hearing that kind of thing said about her parents. Maureen brought a new meaning to the word blunt though, <em>christ</em>. The thing was, she probably wasn’t wrong. Ronnie had served that handsy prick, Frank Burgess, right up until closing the night before and every night since she’d gotten the serving gig. And he hadn’t been looking too vertical when she’d closed up for the night.</p><p>“What am I supposed to do with a kid, Maureen?”</p><p>“She’ll be good, don’t worry.”<br/> <br/>It wasn’t an answer but suddenly Maureen was gone, the door was closed, and there was a nine-year-old standing in Ronnie’s room looking far too used to being dropped off into the hands of near-strangers.</p><p>“Uh...hi, Stephanie,” Ronnie lit a cigarette and gestured to the table and chairs. “Make yourself comfortable, I guess...”</p><p>The kid ignored her and slowly did a lap around the room instead, dark eyes taking in every inch with bored curiosity. Okay, whatever...Ronnie sat in one of the chairs and picked up yesterday’s paper she’d never gotten around to reading.</p><p>“Nobody but Aunt Maureen calls me that.”</p><p>Ronnie was barely listening. On page 3, a headline about the international AIDs conference over in Vancouver had grabbed her attention. She sat up a little straighter, and gripped the edges of the paper with trembling fingers.</p><p>“Yeah?” she almost didn’t hear herself say it.</p><p>“Everyone else just calls me Stevie.”<br/><br/>There was silence for a minute or so while Ronnie absorbed phrases like <em>“new understanding around viral load”</em>, <em>“promising treatment results”</em>, and<em> “light at the end of the tunnel”. </em></p><p>If she’d been alone, she might have broken down and cried at the possibilities. Was the crisis over, or...?</p><p>But she wasn’t alone.</p><p>“What’s this?”<br/><br/>Annoyed at being pulled from the deep emotional well she’d suddenly found herself in, Ronnie looked up to see Stephanie—<em>Stevie</em>—eyeing the well-worn novel sitting on the nightstand beside the bed.</p><p>“What the hell does it look like?”</p><p>It came out harsher than Ronnie meant it, but seriously, she was having a hard time wrapping her head around the possibility that back in Toronto people she knew might not be living death sentences for much longer. Because there might be a treatment...a <em>better</em> treatment for the thing that had been silently killing them. The kid shot her a glare, jaw clenched tight and Ronnie felt a pang of guilt. She just wasn’t good around anyone younger than your average bar patron even when she wasn’t having an internal meltdown.</p><p>“It’s a book, kid.”</p><p>The girl was silent for a minute, evidently unsure if it was worth speaking to Ronnie at all. But she must have been bored out of her mind because eventually, she asked, “Is it any good?”<br/>  <br/>Ronnie didn’t know much, but she knew that Cujo was not an appropriate book for a nine-year-old.</p><p>“It’s supposed to be scary,” she said in lieu of an answer, still reeling from the article in the paper and feeling like this conversation was happening to someone else. “It’s a grown-up book...not for kids.”</p><p>“The movie wasn’t that scary.”</p><p>That gave her pause. Ronnie finally put down the paper and actually looked at Stevie. She had a look in her eye that was daring Ronnie to contradict her, to say that she was too young for a movie like that, or to admonish her for watching it at all. But beneath all that defiant bravado, Ronnie could hear the lie. It <em>had</em> been a scary movie to watch, she <em>had</em> been frightened of it.</p><p>“Sure scared me when I saw it,” Ronnie offered, a hint more companionably than she’d sounded just a second ago.</p><p>She’d seen it at a re-showing with her friend Michael five years ago, four months before the virus had taken him. They’d both left the theatre feeling terrified in that giddy way that left them weezing with laughter at every jump and gasp as they walked down Yonge Street. Ronnie remembered how good it had felt to direct their fear at something stupid and nonsensical. Something they could see coming.</p><p>Stevie just raised her eyebrows a little and turned her attention back to the paperback. She was trying to look disinterested in the conversation, but when she spoke next her voice was somehow smaller.<br/><br/>“I found this stray one time out behind the garage in town. I wanted to keep him, but my mom hates dogs. So I hid him in our shed for a couple nights, fed him Chef Boyardee. He liked it. Only, my step dad found out...” she absentmindedly rubbed her wrist, as if remembering a rough and painful grip there. “He made me watch that movie after.”</p><p>Stevie glanced up at Ronnie, whose face must have betrayed her confusion. Not to mention the shock of hearing the kid string together what basically amounted to a speech. Stevie looked away uncomfortably and, with a very adult-like nonchalant shrug, she added, “You know, so I wouldn’t ever want a dog again.”</p><p>Frank Burgess was a sonofabitch and Ronnie wanted nothing more than to run the man out of town. Why Maureen’s niece let that lowlife near her kid was beyond Ronnie. And from what she saw of him down at The Wobbly Elm, why anyone in Schitt’s Creek tolerated him was a mystery in and of itself.</p><p>Ronnie only realized she’d been silently staring when Stevie glared up at her again.</p><p>“He thought it would scare me but it didn’t!”</p><p>It clearly had.<br/>  <br/>“It was just a dumb dog anyway.”</p><p>Whether she was talking about the stray or Cujo was beside the point. She tentatively reached out and picked up the book, thumbing through the pages and waiting to see if Ronnie was going to stop her. Ronnie didn’t say a word, she just picked up her paper again and flipped to the sports section to take her mind off the story she really wanted to read. Across the room, Stevie toed off her shoes and climbed onto the bed, opening the book to page one.</p><p>“Don’t come crying to me if you get scared,” Ronnie warned, pretending to read Jays stats and not looking up. “And don’t go telling Maureen I let you read Stephen King.”<br/><br/>Would a nine-year-old even be able to read a novel like that? Ronnie figured not, but she bet Stevie was a hell of a lot smarter than the average kid her age.<br/><br/>“Nobody cares if I read this.”<br/><br/>She said it so flatly, without much feeling about it one way or the other, that Ronnie knew she was probably right. Even Maureen Budd, who clearly cared about the kid in her own hard and abrupt way, probably wasn’t keeping tabs on how Stevie entertained herself. And her good for nothing parents were probably even less invested. It made Ronnie’s gut clench at the thought of this little kid, this <em>nine-year-old kid</em> kicking back to read fucking <em>Cujo</em>, falling through some of the same cracks she had when she’d been her age.</p><p>Well, someone needed to look out for her. And it wasn’t like Ronnie had plans to go anywhere any time soon. Maybe it was the light shining at the end of her own tunnel, but Ronnie couldn’t help but feel the swell of do-goodery in her chest.<br/><br/>Someone needed to look out for this kid.<br/><br/></p><hr/><p>
  <br/>
  <strong>20 years later</strong>
</p><p><br/>“Maureen would be proud of you, you know,” Ronnie says in a rare moment of sincerity.</p><p>Stevie is leaning back into the sofa, her blazer discarded in a pile at her side, with her fingers wrapped around her glass of whiskey. She scrunches up her nose at the comment and, as expected, she’s thoroughly unwilling to accept something as emotionally inconvenient as posthumus pride.</p><p>“I’m serious,” Ronnie presses, knocking back the whiskey and standing to leave. She really isn’t any better at this kind of thing than Stevie is, so best not to drag it out. “You’ve done good with this place, probably in spite of Johnny half the time. This is all you, kid.”<br/><br/>Stevie just clears her throat awkwardly, looking like she might argue, but ends up just staring intently at a spot on the carpet. “Uh...thanks Ronnie.”<br/> <br/>“Hmm.”</p><p>Ronnie puts her empty glass on the coffee table and picks up the toolbelt she’d discarded when they’d first sat down. It’s funny to think that this motel had been her home in the early days of arriving in Schitt’s Creek. Or that she’d once considered the town no more than a pit stop on her escape route. Veronica Lee of the past would never have predicted that Ronnie Lee would have stuck around long enough to build a life and a business here. To make friends, to join a community, shit to work on the town council. Even now there are times when her own life feels foreign to her. But it also feels good to stand in this motel office and to see this version of Stevie succeeding. To know the little girl she’d been hadn’t slipped through the cracks completely, just like Ronnie’s old self hadn’t, even if it had taken her a little more time to find her footing.</p><p>“Thanks for the drink Stephanie.”</p><p>She sees Stevie’s head snap up at the name, but Ronnie is already stepping out into the muggy July air and tossing the toolbelt into the back of her truck.</p><p>Yeah, things turned out just fine for the both of them.</p>
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